After a Social Media Meltdown, Tory Grassroots Campaign Prepares for Relaunch

The launch of a youth-orientated Conservative Party group called Activate in late August this year quickly became a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of social media campaigning. As the group prepares to relaunch after a car-crash first outing, Storyful’s Matthew Mulligan looks at what went wrong and what might be learned from that experience.

Although we have enjoyed the attention that Activate has received over the past few days, we believe it to be important…

“Activate has not officially launched… yet.” So came the announcement on August 31, after what looked very much like a botched launch had played out on social media. It involved the hijacking of Twitter handles, impersonation of the group’s leadership, reports of support among them for Jacob Rees-Mogg, and a large amount of parodies. A dizzying few days for a group that styles itself as being “in no way, shape or form associated with the Conservative Party,” but one “working to get Conservatives elected and ensuring that a Conservative government is in power.”

Activate- an independent national grassroots campaign organisation that seeks to actively engage young people in right of centre politics.

Activate spokesman Sam Ancliff told Storyful that the group was set up “to try to create a place where young Conservatives can get together” and become “a vessel to get more young Conservatives involved” in the party.

But, as soon as its website and social media presence became visible on August 26 as part of what is now said to have been a pre-launch, Activate attracted heated attention from critics on the left.

The Twitter account @Activate_uk_net initially launched with memes featuring Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars decrying Jeremy Corbyn as a trap and encouraging people to retweet. The Twitter and Facebook accounts were linked to on the Activate homepage.

This appeal to young voters using memes that were pretty stale was something jumped on by left-wing Twitter users, who proceeded to make their own mocking memes.

on the basis of the above meme I have been hired full-time to create memes and jokes for Activate. Here's a sassy one pic.twitter.com/i21YnsW4kR

Fake donations

People also flooded the donation page with fake donations, using names like “Theresa May is wildly incompetent” and Harold Shipman.

“I think a lot of people hide behind the mask of anonymity,” Ancliff said, commenting on the hostility the group faced when it first launched. “A lot of the time people don’t realise they’re speaking to real people.”

Activate (who have raised a worldly £8.89 from their top 10 'donors' for their troubles) really should screen the names of who is donating. pic.twitter.com/KDQ9GA2P6v

By August 29, however, the Twitter account was attracting the attention of right-wing commentators, including Guido Fawkes, who criticised the clunky nature of the handle. As a result of this, the official Activate Twitter handle became @ActivateBritain. These initial critical tweets attacking Activate still exist, using the old Twitter account name.

Ancliff told Storyful that following the adoption of the new Twitter handle, a parody account was set up under the abandoned @Activate_uk_net handle. By this time, the official Activate site had not updated its Twitter link, so the site was redirecting users to the parody account – another own goal.

The Wayback Machine shows that this wasn’t resolved until August 30, by which point the parody account had sent out numerous damaging tweets which users coming from the Activate site were directed to.

So I think we can all agree that today has been a pretty successful day for Activate

On August 31, the @ActivateBritain account tweeted that it had suffered a successful hacking attempt, and was passing on details of the incident to the police. Tweets from that day show the account had retweeted damaging messages about Activate.

On September 4, the Activate Facebook page posted an update, stating that their Twitter account had been hacked. The post was shared by Sam Ancliff, who told Storyful that when the attack took place, both he and the hacker were logged in at the same time. “I was able to set up two-factor authentication whilst he was still inside, but he changed the passwords and everything and eventually we both got booted out completely,” Ancliff said. “That’s when I got in and tried to put in counter measures and eventually we had about an hour and a half of warring with each other trying to block each other out of various parts, which was fun.”

Activate's Twitter account came under a successful hacking attempt at 15:34 today. The hacker has been identified & reported to the police.

Facebook parody

Meanwhile, the hacked @ActivateBritain Twitter account dismissed the post from Activate’s legitimate Facebook account as a ploy by Theresa May loyalists, and linked to a parody Facebook page (since deactivated) which it falsely claimed was the legitimate Activate presence on Facebook.

Amid the confusion as to who was controlling the @ActivateBritain Twitter account, an announcement was posted from the account which said that “Thomas Wellington” would be appearing on left-wing internet show called The Fix. Wellington was claimed as the leader of Activate, and with the group’s identity in question this announcement caught many off guard.

It later transpired that Thomas Wellington was a fiction, and that the person being interviewed was the campaigns officer for London Young Labour, Fraser Watt.

During the straight-faced interview, “Wellington” claimed that one faction of Activate had been “a Theresa May fan club” but had since been thrown out. Wellington claimed that they were now focused on getting Jacob Rees-Mogg elected as Prime Minister. “We’ve got Moggmentum on our side,” he said.

I am delighted that Momentum activist and Campaigns Officer for London Young Labour, Fraser Watt, has decided to ditch Momentum and join us.

Speaking to camera at the end of the interview, “Wellington” directed viewers to a press release outlining the group’s support for Rees-Mogg, saying that it could be found on “the only Activate page on Twitter”. The press release was pinned to the top of the still hacked @ActivateBritain Twitter account on September 4.

This press release was accompanied by memes created by the hackers, but credited to the real Activate Facebook page and shared on the Twitter account which had been hacked.

As a result of the confusion, and because Jacob Rees-Mogg was in the news after making controversial statements on abortion and same-sex marriage, some media outlets ran with the story that a Tory youth movement was supporting a candidate with views which did not typically appeal to younger voters.

Access regained

On September 8, Activate’s social media profiles carried an update which stated that the legitimate group had regained access to their Twitter account.

Sam Ancliff appeared in a video posted on the legitimate Activate account on the same day, explaining what had happened over the past few days and making his first visible appearance on the Activate account.

“There’s been a lot of confusion over the last week or so about who controls the account. I can confirm Twitter has reinstated access to us, and the actual Activate is back in control of the account,” he said. All content that had been posted to the Activate account was deleted, with one tweet stating that everything posted between the August 31 hack and Ancliff’s video was the work of the same hacker.

This is the first time we have regained access since Thursday the 31st, everything between my video and then has been the same hacker.

Ancliff also indicated that the official launch of Activate would take place on October 14. From September 11 the account started posting videos featuring Activate members, beginning with Ancliff.

Speaking to Storyful, Ancliff explained why it took so long to regain control of the account, which Twitter could not verify belonged to him. “I sent them loads of links [saying] ‘I’ve been on the BBC talking about this, I’m in this article, in this article, I’m all over the newspapers. It’s my account, give it back.’ They did eventually cave. But it took a week to actually get Twitter to approve it”.

Youth vote

As discussed in Storyful’s podcast on social media in the last UK general election, groups like Momentum did a lot of organising and promotion for the Labour Party online, resulting in Labour capturing 60 percent of the vote from those aged 18-24.

The comparative lack of a Tory equivalent puts the party on the back foot, and the chastening experience of Activate thus far should serve as a warning that there is no easy fix. Memes and hashtags can easily come back to bite you, and it remains to be seen if they can successfully be used to promote policies that have proven unpopular with young British voters, especially when the Conservative Party has gotten into bed with DUP, and is leading Britain out of Europe, something young voters were decidedly against. Yet, after a recent showing at the Conservative Party conference and the adoption of a new Twitter handle (@ActivateBritain), Ancliff is looking ahead to Activate’s October 14 launch date. “It’s a priority to me to make sure that our reputation is repaired and I would encourage anyone on the right who might still has doubts about us just to keep an eye on what we’re doing on Twitter,” he told Storyful. “Make up your minds on what you see tomorrow not what you saw yesterday.”